Guillaume Canet's "Blood Ties" now has financing courtesy of Worldview Entertainment, which will also produce. The film has also now locked in stars Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, Noah Emmerich, Lili Taylor, Domenick Lombardozzi and James Caan; shooting begins in New York later this month.

This will be Canet's English-language directorial debut. Canet -- movie star, writer, director (and partner of Cotillard) -- delivered the stunning French "Tell No One" in 2006, which is getting an English-language remake from Ben Affleck and Focus Features. Canet adapted the "Blood Ties" script with writer-director James Gray after starring in the original French film (2008's "Les Liens du sang" aka "Rivals" - trailer below). It is the story of two brothers: younger (Crudup) asks the elder (Owen), a convict, to come back into the underworld in order to help their family. Cotillard and Kunis will play their lady loves.

Canet starred opposite Keira Knightey in American indie "Last Night." Worldview also produced Cotillard's upcoming untitled romantic drama for director Gray ("Two Lovers," "We Own The Night"), which co-stars Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner; it is currently in post. Cotillard and Schoenaerts also star together in the upcoming "Rust & Bone."

Thompson on Hollywood

Born and raised in Manhattan, Anne Thompson grew up going to the Thalia and The New Yorker and wound up at grad Cinema Studies at NYU. She worked at United Artists and Film Comment before heading west as that magazine's west coast editor. She wrote for the LA Weekly, Sight and Sound, Empire, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly before serving as West Coast Editor of Premiere. She wrote for The Washington Post, The London Observer, Wired, More, and Vanity Fair, and did staff stints at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. She eventually took her blog Thompson on Hollywood to Indiewire. She taught film criticism at USC Critical Studies, and continues to host the fall semester of “Sneak Previews” for UCLA Extension.